In an opinion piece featured in Healthcare Dive, Joel Theisen, Lifespark CEO, argues for an update of HIPAA that acknowledges an advanced technology landscape and scales back healthcare data silos. This conversation is getting a lot of buzz in Washington as congress looks to pass a bill which calls for a commission to review existing state and federal protections of personal health information, as well as current practices for health data use by the healthcare, insurance, financial services and consumer electronics industries. It also is to recommend to Congress whether federal legislation is needed to modernize health data privacy.
Read on for Joel’s perspective – he believes above all, HIPAA should protect people’s data but we need to scale back restrictions so that providers can respond to a wider, fuller picture of a person’s health.